To the end of the world and back again

It’s been 2 weeks of drama and excitement, certainly as far as the weather was concerned, from glorious vistas of clouds brewing on the peaks of mountains to brutal 120km winds snapping tent poles to summer snow at the end of the world, Patagonia has thrown everything at us, our adventure has really kicked off in spectacular fashion.

We begin this blog in El Calafate, named after the local calafate berry, legend says that if you eat the berries whilst in Patagonia you will return again one day, so many of us made sure we had some calafate jam/berries/cake/liqueur during our time here, Patagonia is pretty addictive! We had a group meal/meat fest down at our campsite’s restaurant and a great chance to try local patagonian lamb which we had watched cooking all afternoon over a fire.

Lamb BBQ

Meat fest

What El Calafate is most famous for however is Perito Moreno glacier, the enormous, spectacular ice flow that draws many tourists to the area. One of the smaller but more accessible glaciers in the ‘Parque Nacional Los Glaciares’ it is truly spectacular to behold. The weather report for our time at the glacier was worrying at best, with wind, rain and even snow predicted so Emma prepped the group to wear appropriate clothes. It was to become the first of many incidences where the weather would do exactly the opposite of what Emma said and everyone woke to glorious sunshine and perfect blue skies for their day at Perito Moreno. Some of the group were able to hike on the glacier itself and the guide was so impressed with their abilities he took them off piste to forge some new hiking trails. The glacier looked spectacular and showed off its beautiful turquoise colours in the sunshine.

Perito Mereno

The hikers set off

Maddie & Lou

Hikers

Whiskey on the rocks

Joanna toasts the glacier

In the evening we had a BBQ-off with Oasis, another overland group, who had pulled up at camp with us, we feel strongly that we won, beating their pre-made burgers with our home-made ones.

Emma's evening briefing after burgers

One of Argentina's many dogs makes friends with Danielle over dinner

Then it was time for our first border crossing, we were heading over to Chile, a country which does tend to be provide some of the more challenging border crossings in South America. Chile is very protective of its natural environment and doesn’t allow any fresh produce in, though what exactly that includes varies from day to day. So we headed down to Rio Turbio on the legendary Route 40, Patagonia’s answer to Route 66, to cross the border, stopping for a very large lunch where anything we couldn’t eat was forced on some local gauchos. After a lot of unloading and reloading bags and contradictory instructions from border officials (we do tend to cause a lot of confusion and chaos when we turn up at a border) we were in to Chile!

Emma hands over food to the gauchos

Ruta 40

First border crossing

Bushcamping in the fiords

We headed to the beautifully located town of Puerto Natales to get ourselves set up with a new currency and some new food. After baulking at the sudden increase in prices (Chile’s economy is far stronger than Argentina’s) we went off in search of a bush camp after one look at the only campsite in Puerto Natales which looked more like someone’s neglected back yard. After a rather long, stressful drive for Simon and Emma in the front, desperately looking for place to stay, asking the locals and finding nothing. We were about to head back to the neglected back yard in town when we came across Estancia Eberhart, a beautiful, historic ranch, and decided to try our luck there. We met the nicest man in Chile, possibly an overlanding god in person, who was more concerned about finding us the perfect spot on his land than listening to Emma’s promises that we’d leave no trace! We spent the night on a hill overlooking the Chilean Fjords, with tonnes of beautiful firewood, views to die for and no wind. It was overlanding paradise!

Ann's happy with our bush camp

Tent buddies, Ken & Johnny

Wayne digs the neatest fire pit ever

Wayne's helpers

Wood collection

Chile by the fire

Lovely place to sleep

Simon's tent

In the morning we checked out the ‘Cueva de Milodon’ down the road from our camp, a beautiful cave which had once been the habitat of the now extinct ‘milodon’ a giant sloth, reported to be 1.5-2m tall.

Cueva de Milodon

Ken, Ann, Toby & Simon

Milodon & Hannah

Then on to Torres del Paine, the outrageously stunning Chilean national park, home to the famous ‘Towers of Paine,’ jagged mountains eroded away to sinister looking towers. It’s hikers paradise, and half the group headed off to do the ‘W-Trek’ a 4 day walk through the park leading to a sunrise view of the torres themselves.

Ithaca heads to the Towers of Paine

The towers

The view from our campsite

W trek Laguna de los Tres

Laguna Torre

Reflections

W trek - the payoff

Some of the W trekkers

We were blessed with beautiful weather, of course there was wind, there is almost always wind in Patagonia, and we even had a tiny bit of snow, but mostly we had stunning views of the mountains that surrounded our camps. For the rest of the group there was the opportunity to do day hikes in the park.

We moved camps during our time there to access some more of the hikes, the local camp manager was a friendly, laid back chap, he invited us to camp wherever we liked, no problema! That was of course until we’d all set up our tents and he decided we could camp anywhere except there, so we learned how to move already erected tents - mostly by teamwork!

Moving house

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed Torres del Paine, Maddie and Lou went off horse-riding, rating it the best horse riding they’d ever done, the W-Trekkers and day hikers came back tired but very happy and proud of themselves, we enjoyed a brief respite in the wind with a very competitive game of Uno, Simon got to crack out the toolbox to build a new storage solution for Ithaca’s cab and Emma got to cook on an open fire for the first time on the trip. All in all it was a great 5 days!

R'n'r at our campsite

Friendly camp neighbours

Simon tinkering

Camping Torres has very dodgy tables!

But then it was time to up sticks and get back on the road, our destination: The End of the World!

We were heading in the direction of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, the most Southerly city in the world. Driving to Ushuaia is the only way to truly appreciate its remoteness, we drove for 2 days through vast plains of nothing, just brush land, herds of guanacos a few lonely Patagonian foxes and the bleak exposed waters of The Magellan Straits. Ithaca and the group had to pile on to the ferry to cross in to Tierra del Fuego, the islands off the Southern coast of Chile and Argentina. It was a brutally windy day and getting windier by the hour, with sprays of water coming over the front of the boat we took a few cold photos and ran back to the warmth of Ithaca.

Ferry to Tierra del Fuego

Our ferry

Patagonian grey fox

We were lucky to cross in fact, the wind the next day got so bad they stopped running the ferry, in an area famed for its rough waters! But after the night we had we could understand why, we spent the night bush camping in one of the few areas that wasn’t fenced off, or on a gas field. With only Ithaca for protection we set up our tents downwind of her, packed tight together for security, all thoughts of who does and doesn’t snore went out the window. It didn’t make much difference, any snoring was drowned out by the tents flapping around all night, at its calm moments it was 60-70kmph, with gusts up to 120km. Well no one said getting to the end of the world was going to be easy!

Windy dinner for cook group 5

So windy the photo blurred!

But spirits were high the next day when we found ourselves holed up in a lovely little cafe on the Argentinean border. Tierra del Fuego was to throw another curve ball at us in the form of a Chilean customs strike as we attempted to cross back to Argentina on our route South to Ushuaia. In the end we were only delayed by a couple of hours and we spent them filling up on much needed coffee and steak sandwiches.

Recovery coffee for Simon & Emma

Group take refuge and wait out the strikes

Ken

Eamon makes himself at home

Then on to Ushuaia, more plains, more guanacos, and then suddenly mountains, greenery and believe it or not, snow!

Summer!

Simon enjoying driving in the snow

Aussie in the snow

Steve & Tee

Stunning drive over the Garibaldi Pass

Beautiful Ushuaia

Ushuaia

It was a magical welcome to the end of the world but possibly the final nail in the coffin for some of the group who bit the bullet and booked themselves in to accommodation in town for a few nights in a real bed. But for the rest of the group we were treated to a wonderful stay at Camping Rio Pipo, run by a lovely family who couldn’t do enough for us. They invited us to bring our mattresses in to the wood-fire heated common room to sleep away from the ‘tiempo loco’ (crazy weather) Toby was very excited to go to his ‘first ever sleepover.’ The family’s friendly pet dogs and various grandchildren kept us amused and on our toes, particularly for Ellie who woke up to find that one of the puppies had adopted her sandal as a new chew toy.

Camp patriarch Ruben and his grandchild

Whilst in Ushuaia many of the group were able to go out on a boat trip on the Beagle Channel, one of the stretches of water that joins the Atlantic and Pacific and see penguins, sealions and hear about the local history and geography. Some people explored the local museum, did some shopping for some warm layers and blankets for our journey north and generally had a bit of time to relax and recuperate.

Beagle Channel - Ken, Ellie & Hannah

Tres Marias boat

Simon used Ushuaia to borrow the camp's welder and make a new handle for the kettle which was a victim of wind and fire on our epic journey south

Our camp in Ushuaia had a wonderful kitchen and we were all pretty excited to see ovens again, our usual cook group routine turned in to a big cook-off free for all and we cooked up some wonderful sausages and Wayne and Danielle treated us to homemade pizzas.

Kitchen fun

Pizzas!

Wayne & Danielle - pizzas and rice pudding

Packing up to leave the end of the world

The kitchen also presented us with the opportunity to prepare ourselves for our journey North. Simon and Emma got out all the maps and decided, in the name of finding the only decent bushcamps around the Magellan Straits, we would attempt an epic day including 2 border crossings, a ferry ride and 602km of driving. It was a long drive, a lot of sleeping on the truck and with the overland gods on our side 2 very smooth border crossings, including getting our pre-cooked dinner through the Chilean biocontrols, cooked food being considered safe to bring in to Chile.

On the ferry heading north

Johnny & Ken

Long drive days...

We bush camped that night by Laguna Azul just inside Argentina near Rio Gallegos, the wind dropped and we all rediscovered our love for bush camping! Triona did point out, however, that the term ‘bush camp’ was inaccurate as it had been a long time since we’d had any actual bushes! At the risk of turning this in to a blog about toilet stops in South America I’ll just say that bushes and shelter in general are a very important part of our lives and Patagonia is a bit thin on vegetation! But who could complain with a volcanic crater lake and a lava flow to block the breeze and offer a little shelter.

Bushcamp near lava flow

Laguna Azul crater near our bush camp

We followed this with another long day of driving, we headed North and then West back to the famous Route 40, just when we thought Patagonia couldn’t get any less populated this stretch of road proved us wrong, with no towns, no villages and even better no fences! We found a wonderful bush camp tucked in the sand dunes by Lago Cardiel. Everyone was in high spirits, it was cook group 2’s turn for dinner and being big on team spirit and competition they soon had everyone worked up in to a very loud debate about who was the best cook group and a lot of chanting. This was followed by our first proper truck party, a lot of air guitar and one or two vinos.

Ruta 40 again

The promise of some tarmac in the future...

Lago Cardiel - no fences! Bushcamp paradise!

Camping in the dunes by Lago Cardiel

Cook Group 2

It was a sleepy group who got back on to Ithaca the next day. But it was only a short hop up to Perito Moreno where we would spend the night. It’s a little town near Cueva de los Manos, a cave of ancient hand paintings made up to 9300 years ago by the nomadic people in the area. We headed off on a beautiful sunny day in to some pretty spectacular landscape of different colours and a vast canyon cutting through the desert. The paintings were impressive and our guide informative and friendly, she showed us the different hand paintings, done by blowing paint through a straw around your left hand, and also painted pictures of guanacos, which they hunted for just about everything from meat to clothes.

Rio Pinturas Valley, home to Cueva de las Manos

Emma finds a new truck mascot

Manos (hands)

Beautiful setting for the caves

Emma translates for our lovely guide

On the journey back to camp we saw some condors putting on a beautiful show, riding the thermals over the hills.

Then continuing our end of the world theme what can only be described as a plague of locusts covered the road ahead of us. Patagonia is nothing if not dramatic!

Locusts on the road

Our next stop will be up in Argentina’s lake district, we’ll leave the vast plains of Patagonia behind. We thought it was only fitting to say thank you to Gauchito Gil, one of Argentina’s local saints. If you read our previous blog you’ll know that we’ve been beeping all his shrines along the road for good luck on our travels as is tradition over here. We stopped at one of the shrines, hopping over the doomsday-esq. locusts, to leave some offerings, Johnny left one of his cup-a-soups and Simon even left a bit of his hair, it was the least we could do to thank Gauchito Gil for everything that Patagonia has thrown at us and our safe passage through this bleak but beautiful place. Gracias!